LinkedIn Live fails to process: use Baseline, not High or Main

If a LinkedIn Live stream fails to process, LinkedIn tells you to check the encoder's video profile and use Baseline instead of High or Main. Its stated reason is that higher profiles can introduce B-frames and timestamp issues that prevent a successful ingest. Sume's Timeline sets the frame size and frame rate of a pre-rendered MP4 but not the H.264 profile, so the profile is set in the encoder that sends the stream.

The settings

The values are LinkedIn's recommendations for cloud services (Restream, Vimeo Live, Easy Live and Switchboard), updated about a year before this read. LinkedIn also asks for at least 10 Mbps of upload speed. The last column is checked against the Timeline docs.

What a Timeline request can set

Timeline 1.0 documents output width and height as even integers from 256 to 2160, and output.fps as 24, 25, 30 or 60. It rejects codec, crf, ffmpeg_args and similar keys with a 400. The result is an MP4 URL you can fetch, not a stream endpoint.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/timeline-1.0/render \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: live-segment-001" \
  -d '{
    "audio": {
      "url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/voice.wav",
      "duration_seconds": 24
    },
    "video": [
      {
        "source_url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/talk.mp4",
        "start": 0,
        "duration": 24
      }
    ],
    "output": { "width": 1280, "height": 720, "fps": 30 }
  }'

Where the profile gets chosen

Sume does not broadcast. If you stream a pre-recorded segment, play or ingest the MP4 in your own encoder or cloud service and set bitrate, key frame interval and profile there. If the stream still fails to process, change the profile first, as LinkedIn advises, before touching the file.

Troubleshooting order

• Confirm at least 10 Mbps upload speed.
• Match 720p, 30 fps and a 2-second key frame interval.
• Switch the encoder's H.264 profile to Baseline.
• Only then look at the source MP4.